


Not A Single Light

by Moransroar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Apocalypse, Artificial Intelligence, Future, M/M, Robot/Human Relationships, World War III
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 05:51:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13757643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moransroar/pseuds/Moransroar
Summary: If only he had never taught him how to feel.This is one of the drafts for a story I had to write for my uni. Hope you enjoy!





	Not A Single Light

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to sm sad music and come yell at me on [tumblr?](stripesandfeathers.co.vu) :)

The city is quiet. It doesn’t seem like anybody dares to come out of their houses anymore, not even now. Not even in the broad daylight. I get it, though. I understand. The ruins around me are hardly an uplifting sight, and people are already heartbroken and desperate enough as it is.

I am outside because I have a purpose. I need to get out of the city. Outside of the city is the only place I can think of going after everything that has happened, and the only place I would really want to be right now.

I know the way by heart but my body hasn’t been functioning as well as it should be these past few days, ever since it happened. So now the road is long and the route that once took me mere minutes has already taken up the better part of an hour. I am not tired, because I cannot be, but like I said – I haven’t been functioning well, and I am not alone.

 

 

“No, no, are you crazy? Step back, my boy!”

I nearly yelped. His voice was always loud, but it was a _kind_ loud. A fond, amused loud. Upon hearing his warning, I looked up, and glanced his way. I had no concept of heat back then, and the stove had never seemed like a very dangerous thing. I had been about to put my hand on one of the hobs to see if I could feel the heat from it. The light on the stove told me that it was on, but it didn’t seem warm. I had only been trying to make him breakfast. I liked making him breakfast because he would smile at me, and when he would smile at me I knew that I had done something right.

Perhaps I was a bit of an overachiever. Or a pleaser. But I only knew him, and I was fairly sure that he only knew me. Back then, I liked being the only one. How could I ever have known that he had felt so terribly lonely before me? I didn’t even know what loneliness was.

 

He loved reading me stories. Which some might consider odd since I am not a child. I don’t have the body of a child, nor the mind of one. He always told me that I was 22 years old. I was 22, and he was 35, and he loved reading me stories. They helped me understand the world and come to terms with the way things were, and I think that my reactions to some of his stories helped him understand a few things from my point of view, too.

I always made him tell me stories about what the world was like when he was my age. “Very different, my darling,” he would say, and run a hand through my hair. I did my best to mimic his smile. I was still learning to control the muscles in my face.

“Tell me more,” I urged him, like I always did, and he never left me disappointed.

 

He caught me looking at the smooth lines around my wrists where skin met skin sometimes, but whenever I would ask him about it he always had a vague answer at the ready. Something along the lines of: “I’ll tell you when you’re older” or “This is not important right now. Later, okay?” and I always let him change the subject because I knew what he looked like when he was upset and I didn’t want to see that knowing that I was the cause of that particular expression.

And I didn’t want to be ungrateful. He taught me everything I knew, over time. He taught me morals and how to appreciate the little things in desperate times and he taught me how to be kind. He taught me how to smile and how to speak properly and recognise certain emotions so that I could one day join him into the city. So that one day he could introduce me to the world and its people. I looked forward to that.

 

One day he grabbed his coat from the coat hanger in the foyer, and ducked into the living room where I sat reading to cast me a scarf. It was the middle of winter.

“Come on then,” he said, sounding cheerful despite the depressing cold that had come over the city only days ago, “Let’s go for a walk, you and I.”

I was perplexed. He had never liked the cold, or so I thought. And if we would go outside, that was the least of our problems.

And yet I followed.

He spoke to me, chatted animatedly about what he had been doing in his study, what he had discovered. I liked it when he spoke to me about all the things that kept his mind occupied, because I was rarely allowed in his office whenever he was in there experimenting away. Sometimes that made me feel like a child, but after days of his locking himself away there would always come a moment where he’d appear out of nowhere, with a big smile on his face and a new, silly idea for something to do.

That was the first time he had taken me to the hill. The war had only just begun then, so there were people out on the streets, still free and convinced that it wouldn’t reach them. It wouldn’t harm them. They were safe.

And we went to the hill. We sat there in the crisp, cold grass while he smoked a cigarette and told me about physics. I was more interested in arts, I had noticed, but I loved it when he taught me things because he seemed more alive when he was teaching me something than when he wasn’t – so I always let him speak.

 

He liked to listen to music before that wasn’t allowed anymore. We had an old vinyl player, tucked away in a corner of the room on a stand made of dark wood. Sometimes he let me choose a record, and I had soon acquired a favourite.

Normally I would browse the records as he sat in his armchair, reading, or just listening quietly. Whenever I looked over my shoulder I would catch him watching me, and his eyes would turn soft. I liked it when he looked like that.

One evening he approached me as I looked over the records, put his hands on my hips, and spun me around. “I’m going to teach you how to dance,” he said with determination, and he sidestepped into the centre of the living room. I think – as he twisted me under his arm only to pull me in close again – that that was the first time I genuinely laughed. He looked so proud.

 

On the night that the bombs fell for the first time, we hid in the shelter under his house. I had never been scared before, but I think something in me developed the ability to be frightened on that night because I could see that he was, too. We looked at each other, and then he pulled me close, and we sat there until the sirens went off again and we could return to our respective beds. He had stood in the door opening to my room that night like he hesitated, like he wanted to stay, before he told me goodnight and closed the door behind him. I didn’t understand, back then. I had no idea how he felt.

 

The world lay in ruins. He told me that the world had been at war before and that everything had ended relatively well, that the worst would be over soon, and it put my mind at ease, even if only a little bit.

I decided that I didn’t like the emotion of stress, or fear for that matter – but I didn’t want him to take them away from me. They were part of who I was, and he said that I was very special in that respect. I didn’t know any others like me, but I doubt that he did, and that was a minor comfort.

And whenever I was afraid, he would hold me. Whenever the sirens went off, he would take my hand, and down in the shelter he would tuck me against his side and nose my hair and talk to me, so softly. And sometimes when I couldn’t stop shaking and I had my ears covered against the noise outside, he would lift my chin and kiss me, and things would seem a little bit less bad for a while.

“When the night is safe again, I will take you to see the stars, my boy,” he promised me one day.

“Will you?” I asked. I smiled.

“Yes! Yes of course.” His soft, oddly careless laugh close to my ear made me feel warm in a situation so dire. “I know the best spot for stargazing.”

 

 

The sky is darkening with the first signs of sundown and it is quiet around me. The sound of my heavy footsteps on the concrete catch on the brick walls of the streets and bounce back and forth. Not much is left of the houses. Not much is left of our house.

Towards the end of the street there is a gate and I pass through it, onto a gravel path. From there on I need to put more effort into making sure the mechanics of my knees don’t give out. They had suffered quite the blow, and the sound that emits from them with every step I take is astounding, but I push through, up the hill. To the top.

He is heavy against my side but I make it, some minutes after the sun has dipped behind the buildings and the orange light of the sunset has faded. It leaves the sky looking wide and dark above me as I lay him down on his back.

“Look,” I say, “Look at the stars.”

I lay down on my back beside him and I take his hand. With the sensors under the skin that hasn’t been ripped away from my fingers yet, I feel that his hand is cold. Hopefully it will be summer soon.

“Isn’t this what you wanted to show me? It’s beautiful,” I say.

I wish that he would take my hand and squeeze my fingers, or that he would hum, or turn onto his side to kiss my cheek. The war is over and the sky is clear, glittering with a million specks of light, but all I can think of is that he never got to show me. He promised me.

Not a single light is on in the city. I think I might just be the only one left.

If only he had never taught me how to feel.

**Author's Note:**

> [u should click](http://botanicalmartian.tumblr.com/post/168649541519/botanicalmartian-first-you-build-robot-then-you)


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